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Tibetan Medicine Gains Popularity in World Market
Tibet, known as the "roof of the world," will attract global attention next month with the 2000 International Symposium on Tibetan Medicine to be held in the capital city of Lhasa.
More than 500 experts on Tibetan medicine will be in the city July 15-17 to discuss the development of Tibetan medicine and search for ways to preserve this unique, ancient system of medical treatment in the 21st Century.
The symposium will be the first of its kind ever held in the homeland of Tibetan medicine, demonstrating that Tibetan medicine has won the recognition of people around the globe.
Tibetan medicine, with a history of more than 2,500 years, has been used by Tibetan people for years to ward off diseases of various kinds. Tibetan medicine is used to treat arthritis, gastritis, gastric ulcers and altitude sickness.
The Qinghai-Tibet plateau has 2,100 kinds of herbs, 150 species of animal and 40 types of minerals which can be used as ingredients in Tibetan medicine. Over 50 pharmaceutical factories specializing in Tibetan medicine have been built in Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces with a combined annual output value of 400 million yuan.
A British tourist, surnamed Jennings, who has been traveling in Tibet, said that before she left the plateau, she had visited a Tibetan doctor, took a medicated bath and bought a large quantity of Tibetan medicine to take home.
"I want my family members and friends to experience the magical medicine with me," she said.
Foreigners don't need to travel all the way to Tibet for medical treatment or to buy medicine, because China has opened Tibetan medicine centers in north America, Europe and southeast Asia, said Mei Xuedai, an official of the Jinhe Tibetan Medicine Company in Qinghai Province.
Mei's group has exported four new products to the United States and set up a Tibetan Medicine branch in Japan. The group recently opened up a Tibetan medicine website which receives numerous daily visits from Tibetan medicine lovers and medical experts in and out of China.
Richard Blooms, a well-known American entrepreneur, will sign a contract with the Jinhe Group later this year for developing new Tibetan medicine after a two-year investigation and negotiations with the Chinese counterpart. All products will be exported to the United States, Canada and Europe.
Tibet has 21 Tibetan medicine factories, which produce 360 types of drugs. The Cheevheng pain-killer plaster, made by the Qizheng Tibetan Medicine Group, won the grand prize at the 26th International Exhibition of Inventions held in Geneva in 1998.
Tibetan Rhodiolao, a new type of tonic which is good for brain and able to control cancer spreading, now has a ready market in the United States, Korea and Japan.
The magical effect of Tibetan medicine has aroused great concern of medical research institutes all over the world. The main book on Tibetan medicine, titled "Gyushi" or "The Four Medical Codices," which contains classification of various diseases, physiology, pathology, treatment and prescriptions, has been translated into English, French, German and Japanese.
Incomplete statistics show that more than 20 countries and regions have set up Tibetan medicine research institutions staffed with 3,000 researchers. Four symposiums on Tibetan medicine have so far been held abroad.
Some professors at the Tokyo University and the Medical University of Toyama will head for Qinghai in the near future to probe the possibility of bilateral cooperation in the development of Tibetan medicine.
Wang Shiping, a Chinese Tibetan medicine expert, attributed the growing world-wide demand for Tibetan medicine to its effectiveness in curing allergic, collagen and immune system diseases, free from pollution and easy to take.
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